TARA Emergency Communications Drill 2003 Tahoe Daily Tribune Article - Nov 24 TARA participated in the annual California State Emergency Hospital Drill with Barton Memorial Hospital.
Thanks to volunteers John and Sheila, (KC7AGI/KB7YFU), Todd and Zetta (AC6CN/AC6CO), Dick, (KD7JMR), Kriby (N7NM), Bill, (W6HGL)Matt (W7KJU), Jack, (KT6JS) and Paul (WA6EWV).
The Barton Hospital State Emergency Exercise was held on Thursday, November 13th.
TARA participated in the operation to provide communications from the Barton hospital (established as the EOC) to the Sacramento EOC. This is the first year Traffic was passed from EOC to EOC. This provided us an excellent opportunity to learn to communicate under state protocols using Message forms pre designed to facilitate Traffic for hospital information.
This year's scenario was also somewhat eye opening, as it was a bioterrorism incident. This exercise exposed us to the realities of providing emergency communications under Dangerous conditions, and indeed will guide us in re organizing our own plans for Responding to incidents that might expose us to immediate danger.
Communications with the hospital was again handled with FRS radios, allowing us to talk directly with the Hospital operations director, and keeping TARA personel from direct exposure to the bacterial infection.
Thanks to John Sloane for organizing our response, and to the participants for allowing TARA to perform as a "professional" response team.
AND, a very special thanks to Dick, KJ7UK, for delivering the all-important hospital Report forms to the TARA van from the DCART exercise, allowing us to communicate at the same level as the other county EOC's! BACK